When 70 Authors Died at Once

Many authors publish literary works under a pen name, to made their name easier to pronounce or remember, or to avoid being judged by past works, or, like yours truly, just to keep their professional life separate from their private life. It was a different story for Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. He took different pen names, or what he called "heteronyms," as completely different personalities, and wrote from the viewpoint of that personality. Pessoa created characters and then inhabited them, writing as if he were in the character's body, even if the writing itself wasn't about the character. It was a habit he picked up as a child, to unleash his creativity without revealing too much of himself. The strangest part of the story was that no one knew that these different writers were all one person until Pessoa passed died! Pessoa's unpublished writings were discovered after his death in 1935, revealing him to be 70 different authors.